Grow Your Own Farm-to-Table: Just Add Community

$10,770

Successfully funded on Apr 02, 2014

99 supporters

About This Project

Summary

Fresh Stops have the power to transform our industrialized food system. Community centers, churches, schools, mosques, and synagogues have the power to use their locations and volunteer power to counter the threats that heart disease, hypertension, and poverty
pose to communities where vegetables are "luxury items."

But affordable, healthy foods aren't luxury items. Access to health is a human right. That's why, through Fresh Stops, we're transforming our food system from the bottom up, teaching communities with hands-on education that both provides access
to healthy foods, learning how to cook and love veggies, and transforming our relationship with our community and the earth.

Let's say you made less than 24K per year: at the Fresh Stop, you'd only
pay $12 for the share of produce pictured at left. And if you made more, you'd pay anywhere from $20 to $30 for the same share of farm-direct, organic produce. At $30, you still pay less than you would for conventional produce! Farmers love the guaranteed
bulk orders.

If we build a Fresh Stop in every community we would revolutionalize our broken food system and undo the damage that low wages have done to our community health.

But Fresh Stops take a lot of work and a lot of administration.
Grow Your Own Fresh Stop will mentor organizers through the Fresh Stop building process and then give them the online resources crucial to their success.

Based on my experience as a web developer, Grow Your Own Fresh Stop would, conservatively, cost $89,600 to build. But because of my affordable living situation in Quito, Ecuador, the support of my wonderful partner Charity, my willingness to volunteer
my time, and an amazing community of volunteers, we can get it done for just $12,000. That's a bargain.

What Are Fresh Stops?

Fresh Stops are communities that offer shares of beautiful, farm-direct, sustainably-grown
fruits and vegetables to people on an income-based sliding scale. Families who are financially able to, pay more, and low-income families who can't, pay less.

When you come to pick up your Fresh Stop share, participants will invite you to linger over coffee and conversation, recipes and samples, and fun and games. And if you visit our classes,
you can learn with us about how our eating choices affect our health, the health of the earth, and the health of our communities.

The Fresh Stop model provides communities with the tools to organize themselves to overcome healthy-food access barriers: but it takes a lot of work. As Fresh Stop leaders emerge to bring communities together, they need support to facilitate the process.

Why re-invent the wheel at every Fresh Stop? Let's get the details out of the way so communities can focus on developing leaders, building relationships with local farmers, and ultimately revolutionizing our food system from the grassroots up.

Use Of Funds

$7,000 Tipping Point Goal

With each Fresh Stop event, organizers have to deal with setting up web
pages to take online orders, phone banking, sending publicity and reminder emails, and overseeing finances with complex spreadsheets. Precious volunteer time is eaten up by repetitious tasks.

Everyone was doing THE SAME THING EVERY TIME! Fresh Stops have very similar needs.
As a web developer, I died a little bit inside every time I cut and pasted an email, changing just the dates. "I could automate these tasks!" I thought. "We could save hours of work at each Fresh Stop if only we had the resources to set things
up properly!"

In partnership with New Roots, the Louisville-based
Fresh Stop organization, we will bring together representatives from Fresh Stop communities in Washington DC, Indianapolis, and Louisville to decide what each needs, technically, to support Fresh Stop organizing.

My years of working with powerful web-based content management systems has given me exposure to all the open-source technologies that are available to support this effort and I know how much groundwork is required. With the proper time and funding I can
bring all these pieces together and create a technical infrastructre that would be the soil in which planted Fresh Stops can germinate and flourish. (Here are some of the projects I've worked on in a technical leadership capacity:
Project Aware,
Demos, and the
Open Government Project.)

Over this last year-and-a-half, I worked as a full-time national Fresh Stop organizer. I started a Quixote Center program (in partnership with
Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light) empowered by your generous donations. Thank you for your support! We are excited to carry forward this program independently by taking this experience and building
it into the website.

FreshStop.org Features

You may have noticed that we have two goals: 7K and 12K. If we raise 7K we will be empowered to build the site and we will be ecstatically grateful. The chart below shows the features we will be empowered to build by your generous donations.

Financial Sustainability

This site will require maintenance and support over the years.
We plan for this site to be finanically sustainable: we will charge a 5% transaction fee which will pay for ongoing support and, if it grows, may even pay for a national Fresh Stop organizer.

If this site blows up, it will be the beginning of a self-sustaining, community-building venture that you can be a part of.
Will you support this project?Thank you, friends, family, and supporters. You are the ones who make social movements possible.

Rewards

$10.00

$15.00

Thank you email and acknowledgement on website plus social media shout out.

1987 left

Select Reward

$25.00

All of the above plus a thank-you postcard.

485 left

Select Reward

$50.00

Thank you on beautiful Ecuadorian card handmade from natural materials like bark, leaves, and flowers (see picture at bottom left). Plus an acknowledgement on the website, and a social media shout out.

$100.00

$130.00

Handmade Ecuadorian Picture made from natural materials like bark, leaves, and flowers, framable (see picture at bottom left). Plus handwritten thank you, an acknowledgement on the website, and a social media shout out.

$650.00

$850.00

Pick any two single items above. Plus Fresh Stop consultation if desired. Plus personal thank you, an acknowledgement on the website, and a social media shout out.

5 left

Select Reward

$1,250.00

Elegant Handmade Leather Bag (many different designs available, we'll talk). Phone Consultations on How to Start a Fresh Stop. Also offered for free. Plus handwritten thank you (see picture at bottom left), an acknowledgement on the website, and a social media shout out.

3 left

Select Reward

$2,000.00

Pick one item and an Elegant Handmade Leather Bag (many different designs available, we'll talk). Plus Fresh Stop consultation if desired. Plus personal thank you, an acknowledgement on the website, and a social media shout out.

4 left

Select Reward

$3,000.00

Pick two items and an Elegant Handmade Leather Bag (many different designs available, we'll talk, see picture at bottom left). Phone Consultations on How to Start a Fresh Stop. Plus personal thank you, an acknowledgement on the website, and a social media shout out.

2 left

Select Reward

$5,500.00

Three the items above and a custom item from Ecuador. Plus I'll tattoo your name on my firstborn child. Just kidding about the tattoo (See picture at bottom left). Plus personal thank you, an acknowledgement on the website, and a social media shout out.

1 left

Select Reward

$10,000.00

Five of the single items above and a custom item from Ecuador. Plus a tattoo of your design on the head of my firstborn child (See picture at bottom left). Just kidding. Plus personal thank you, an acknowledgement on the website, and a social media shout out.